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Leontion’s Universal Faculty

Circumspect, I have seen through the centuries
frayed cords encapsulate the shaded tale
oracles portend my unreciprocated love
misogyny reigns in a world of grave unraveling
positing by nature I am meant to obey
Aristoclea teaches Pythagorus:
philosophy inscribed on a fine layer of dust
which cannot be remembered

Arete, the splendor of Greece
possessed of the beauty of Helen
with the soul of Socrates
and the tongue of Homer
will never bear daughters of philosophy
2300 years they will clamor
at the gates of knowledge denied keys
hidden in the cowering folds
of history’s divisive night

I am a lioness, prostasia of the Garden
presumptive former hetaera
with the effrontery to challenge Theophrastus
whirlpools of thought capture victims unsung
as long whispered fears signal
the philosophic imaginary, a wilderness
an undertow on volcanic shores

Detritivores tunnel, long spools unwinding
as gods consume the fervid masses
arguing for ataraxia
knowing what they will do to Hypatia
equality seen as democracy’s moral failure
delineating lost markers
we are denied existence
stripped of effective consciousness

Property lines drawn in space
each a bounded deontology
we are deemed natural deformities
maladapted, malevolent sisters
less than shallow, temples atop sewers
cartographic drawings without names
I refuse to build statues
to these paragons that forsake me

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This feels related to the Monique Wittig ideas. The othering of gender.
Women contributing to philosophy, but their perspectives lost in transient sand, the slippery amnesia of prejudice.

This unreciprocated love is another interminable achy ‘almost’? Love of philosophy and mind, shared, but intangible. Perhaps beyond the deep blue night of your garden there is some hope for happy resolution? =)

Yes, Michèle Le Doeuff is the French feminist philosopher that explores the ‘philosophic imaginary’ and I thought keeping the ‘I’ here tied neatly to Wittig’s ideas about being a total subject. I love how you’ve connected this poem to Thresholds through ‘almost’. As Epicurus’ school allowed women as the rule instead of exception surely we can find hope today :). Though women are still woefully underrepresented in university philosophy departments in the US (approximately 20% of philosophy professors are women)!

i really like the strength in the stanza that stars with being the lioness…and i agree we still have far to go…but its been thousands of years since you worked in it…haha…just kidding i know what you mean…smiles.

“philosophy inscribed on a fine layer of dust
which cannot be remembered”
hauntingly beautiful lines… all leading my down to that last stanza which is brilliant, “temples atop sewers,” wow.
and how did i miss this one before?

Yes, I walk around in a constant state of shock about what doesn’t surprise or move us. I’m working on a poem about the Sand Creek Massacre and the assimilation era that followed wondering how society can overlook and not feel culpable for so much.

I am positive long before Christianity finally helped wipe out the woman’s role as equal to that of a mans, women enjoyed equal status both as equals to Gods and mortals alike. Their status was whittled down to a lesser and lesser role in society until it became the ‘norm’ that for a woman to be learned, she had to be either a witch or possessed, and then it just got worse to where she wasn’t even ‘allowed’ to be taught anything other than how to be a good wife. Goodness Anna, this has bought the ancient past back to the future with a bang! Fabulous write.

I am in a lot of trouble – do mobs still carry pitchforks and torches or are we living in a new era of internet trolls :)? I am happy to hear the time gap was bridged successfully, it was important to me. Thanks for your great comment!

Property lines drawn in space
each a bounded deontology
we are deemed natural deformities
maladapted, malevolent sisters
less than shallow, temples atop sewers
cartographic drawings without names
I refuse to build statues
to these paragons that forsake me

Good! No more statues! Unless we put them atop the sewers when the temples are finally moved—or, no more temples too! But I would have preferred a welcome to the table than a reversal of fortune all round. Enough dreaming and sighing–it was deliberate hegemony built with the cooperation of all–and though we can ignore sexism in some quarters, the sayings have not been burned, and like racism, it isn’t far enough beneath the surface. I felt that more in colleges and universities than anywhere else, right where you’d expect more sense. Sorry that by the end of the poem one still has to stand up alone and rebel.

Ha-ha, who will move the temples? I agree about the welcome to the table and academia should be a place to expect sense. I think for Leontion she did stand alone, I hope we do not have to do that as much now.

The glass ceiling is not broken, the brotherhood re-unites; the genders split and everywhere equal work gets unequal pay. Only window dressing now in terms of jobs to where we were in 1900, I think. A few break through, of course, like the tokens they are, whispered about, vilified — and more moms alone try to put meals on the table while telling the family history, and remembering every remedy ever uttered in hopes of keeping the children healthy.

Property lines drawn in space…out of this stunning write…this line stopped me in my tracks (Had a huge “discussion” last evening on how “ownership” has allowed us to become the beasts we are. Funny how events color our interpretations…is it any wonder the world is in such a mess! 😉

Wooo ya! I refuse to build statues to anything that forsakes me. So true, the time it takes to idolize something in clay, cement, stone, granite or whatever, many lives could be touched and helped. That’s why I had that statue on my page, if a statue represents us we can’t be free do do anything. I have to be able to help and be free to go lend a hand. I know your piece is more philosophical, and I too wish more women would be/could be/should be in front of these classrooms, because there is a perspective we are missing out on. Always luv your stuff. thanks for your visits to my page. I’m sorry I don’t get to comment as much as I should, but I always read your page. Be kool. Super presentation here.

That freedom is vitally important to creating change and in this case the further we look back the less energy we have to look forward. There is absolutely a perspective that we miss and until it’s presented and heard we’ll continue to ignore and oppress other voices whether they are women or marginalized groups. You’re my 1000th ‘like’ so thank you for that :)!

I loved it before, and now I read it differently, with changed eyes.
“whirlpools of thought capture victims unsung
as long whispered fears signal
the philosophic imaginary, a wilderness
an undertow on volcanic shores”

Your work ever this alluring, stunning maze of amazements, ineradicable turns of phrase– lessons, flying through history, gathering up what does and doesn’t please you but belongs anyway– do keep writing as yourself– masterful. I especially liked: I am a lioness, prostasia of the Garden
presumptive former hetaera
with the effrontery to challenge Theophrastus” xxxj

esp. loved the part with the lioness and the refusing to build statues to these paragons that forsake me…think much has changed for many of us but still a long way to go… powerful voice again anna and love the way you approach this

Beautiful writing Anna! Recalling and combining mythology and history to modern writing is a rare offering. It mesmerized me and called for revisits. Many of the words got me stumped that’s why! Great write Ma’am!

Anna, this is such an important piece. We have lost our connection with this galactic space…this is beautiful and necessary, ‘whirlpools of thought capture victims unsung.’ Our consumption and a desire to control leads to an absence of civil liberty and simple love…so happy to know that you are thinking about these things. I love the mythological figures here. Thank you for ‘refusing’, I join this revolt!

Excellent, really is. I need to revisit this, delving into its arcana 🙂 I’ve written about another woman philosopher, Aspasia, also a prostitute. But I hadn’t heard of her before your poem. Fortunate for me, I must say. I’m glad you worked in Hypatia too. The poem is really a gold-mine of philosophical wonder.

Thank you, I wasn’t providing notes during NaPoWriMo and now somewhat regret the decision :). I have a poem dedicated to Hypatia, full of mathematics and the liberty of the mind, called Stochastic Intimacy.

Always your love for vocabulary shines through – and it especially works when the historical background shoulders the etymology of the language. Like a lot of people here, I thought the lioness stanza was the best, being the most personal.

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[…] Circumspect, I have seen through the centuries frayed cords encapsulate the shaded tale oracles portend my unreciprocated love misogyny reigns in a world of grave unraveling positing by nature I am… […]

Robert Anton Wilson

Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say, ‘I love fish,’ and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

Witold Gombrowicz

“Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog.” Ferdydurke

I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.

Gustav Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Dušan “Charles” Simić

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Monique Wittig

"Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it... Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being - subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say 'I' I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor. "

W.S. Merwin

All the things that really matter to us are impossible...Writing poetry is impossible. I don't know how to write a poem. A poem - there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don't know. There is so much that comes out of what we don't know and what we don't have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. - from Doing the Impossible, Yes Magazine, Issue 59

Thomas Aquinas

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.